


things hoped for and things not seen

by bluebeholder



Series: the accidental epic [10]
Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Act Zero, Gen, Growing Up, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Protective Older Brothers, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-04
Updated: 2017-07-04
Packaged: 2018-11-23 03:34:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11394519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluebeholder/pseuds/bluebeholder
Summary: This is the story of how Credence Barebone grows up. He is not seen by anyone at all and he should not hope for more in his life. But he wants to be seen, and he dares to hope regardless.And perhaps it will all come out right, in the end.(Standalone fic.)





	things hoped for and things not seen

**Author's Note:**

> Please be aware that this is Not A Nice Fic, in the sense that there is no explicit happy ending. Read further into _a better mirror_ for that. This is TECHNICALLY a standalone fic because it functionally doesn't rely on anything in the rest of the 'verse to make sense, even though I personally link it in. So read on in confidence that this can be read just as a Credence character study. :)

Credence Barebone does not exist.

He lives, he breathes, he hands out his Ma’s words on street corners—and he does not exist. There is no record of his birth, Ma tells him, because his devil of a mother didn’t care enough to give him one. “Only God holds that record,” she says, gently smoothing back his hair. “And that is _more_ than enough for a good man to live his life.”

What Ma says, Credence believes. He is eight years old and he worships her like he worships God, maybe even more. She did not give birth to him, but it is she who feeds him, clothes him, teaches him. The Bible tells him to “Honor thy father and mother.” Credence does not know the parents who first gave him life, so he takes God for a father and Mary Lou Barebone for a mother.

His sister is two years younger and his best friend. Chastity is full of fire: he’s already used to her beating him in footraces, even though she’s only six. They aren’t supposed to play in the street, and Credence wouldn’t because Ma forbids it, but he can’t let Chastity go alone. There are rough boys out there. Worse, there are devils and witches lurking in the shadows.

Ma hits their palms with a ruler when she finds out about the races. “You must not play with such godless heathens,” she says. “Bring the Word to them, but never play.”

Chastity, too young to know that asking questions is blasphemy, clutches her red-striped palms to her chest. “Why?”

“Because you are the children of God,” May says. She lifts her eyes to Heaven—or, rather, the sagging ceiling of the house. “You have a higher calling.”

Credence doesn’t exactly know what that means. He prays about it anyway, when he’s finished lisping his way through the Lord’s Prayer. “And pleath help me underthtand my higher calling, amen,” Credence says to the ceiling.

“You don’t have a higher calling,” Chastity says. There’s only one bed in their room, so he and Chastity are tucked in together.

“Ma thaid I do.”

“Ma says your real mother was a devil. You _can’t_ be good!”

The darkness of the room is frighteningly close, when Chastity says things like that. “If we’re children of God, it’th all right,” he says. 

“Oh,” Chastity says. She mulls that over. Finally, she snuggles up to Credence, hugging him around the middle. “I’d love you even if you were a devil.”

Long after Chastity has fallen asleep, Credence thinks about that. If he’s the son of a devil, but his Ma says he has a higher calling—he must believe his Ma. She’s holy. It’s _right_ to believe her.

The years pass, and soon enough Credence is eleven years old. Ma begins to reach out to more and more people, drawing them into her holy crusade. She teaches the children about witches, coaches Credence in obedience and trains Chastity in virtue. She becomes stern, and no longer reads them stories from the Bible at night, because this is a frivolity when they are so old. She certainly does not stroke Credence’s hair anymore. He misses it.

They live now in a dilapidated house where Ma performs her ministry. She holds worship services in the house for the destitute and the interested. Sometimes, there are loud meetings where people pray for salvation and there is talk of witches and pyres. Generally, Credence and Chastity make themselves scarce during these. Credence does not know what thumbscrews are, but they do _not_ sound pleasant. 

Around this time, strange things begin to happen. Credence hides them as best he can, because he knows that they are deeply, terribly unnatural. A hole in his pants should not mend itself. He tears it open again and fixes it with thread. Striking a match should not produce soap bubbles. He throws away the whole box—a sinful waste—and pours water on the wood for an excuse. A pebble should not become a cat’s-eye marble in his hand. He rolls this away toward some unfortunate children who might like the pretty bauble (though he badly, badly wants to keep that one). No one notices, he thinks. 

Chastity finds boys who will play baseball with her and makes Credence go along. They make it through four or five games before Ma finds out. For that transgression, she whips them both. They’ve had it done before—Ma likes to say “spare the rod, spoil the child”—but this is very different.

“I had hoped,” Ma says, stern as the face of an angel in a church, “that you would not spread your wicked ways to your sister.”

“What do you mean, Ma?” Credence asks, still trembling. 

Ma hands him his belt. “I know you’ve been hiding things from me.”

Credence’s blood runs cold. He wants to lie. Oh, how he wants to lie! But he isn’t a liar. He is his Father’s son and he won’t lie to his Ma, not even by omission. “I ought to have told you…”

Suddenly Ma drops to her knees before him and seizes his hands in hers. “You cannot succumb to the wicked urges you feel,” she pleads. “Suppress them. Hid them. Pray for your soul as I pray for it.”

“I—I will,” Credence stammers, taken aback.

There’s fanatical fire in Ma’s eyes. Her hands are squeezing his so tightly that it feels like his bones are going to crack. “If you will not,” she says, “then there are things I must do. The Good Book reminds us we must not suffer a witch to live, does it not?” 

For the first time in his life, Credence is afraid of his Ma. 

It is a mere two weeks later when Credence almost drowns in the bathtub, Ma holding him down under the water until he stops breathing, proving that he is not a witch by trying to drown him. Witches cannot drown, and Credence...Credence can. He wakes up on the floor, lips blue with cold, and when he staggers into the room he shares with Chastity she only gives him a disappointed look and turns her back. He is left to warm himself with the cheap clothes they own and prayers that go nowhere. It feels like Credence might never be warm again.

He never really recovers from that. 

If asked, later, he would say that he remembers very little of his life from the age of eleven to the age of fifteen. It’s a gray blur, punctuated periodically by flashes of pain. There is very little Credence wants to remember.

And then Ma brings Modesty into the house. She’s a year old, a tiny, happy baby who pulls on Credence’s clothes and talks to him in her nonsense babble. Credence _adores_ her. He takes care of her as much as possible, because Chastity is impatient with her and Ma has more important things to do. It’s Credence who helps Modesty take her first steps, who reads her stories from the Bible to help her sleep at night, who hears her first word. 

“Bird,” she says, pointing at the pigeons roosting in the church rafters.

Credence’s heart leaps. “Yes, it’s a bird, Modesty,” he says. “Pigeons. Like doves. Do you remember what doves mean?”

Modesty just keeps looking up at them. “Bird,” she repeats.

“They mean peace,” Credence says, mostly to himself. There’s not a lot of peace to be found in this church, not even with Modesty sitting quietly on his lap. “Not that they’ve ever helped me. But I suppose they mean good things for you, since you’re not sinful and wicked like me…”

Something in his tone must have been particularly sad. Modesty climbs up unsteadily onto her feet and plants a slightly sticky kiss on his cheek. Credence holds his little sister tight and prays that she never feels the way he feels. 

The years drag by as slow as a broken clock tells time. Credence finds himself shadowed by his littlest sister. He keeps calling Modesty that, even after Ma refuses to be his mother anymore and Chastity refuses to be called his sister. He keeps it a secret that he uses his terrible powers sometimes to darn the worst holes in her clothing so that Ma will never shout at her. He takes the blame for Modesty’s misdeeds—and Chastity’s, too, because as much as she turns a cold shoulder to him Credence can’t let Ma beat his fragile sister—until his back is a chronicle of the sins of three children. 

Second Salem grows in its influence and reach, drawing converts from across the country. He never says it, but Credence sometimes feels that they are being watched. Strange people across streets, a prickling on the back of his neck during meetings, the creak of unseen feet on the stairs…it puts a taste of fear in his mouth. The witches are here, he is sure, and he is even more sure that he cannot tell his Ma of this. He should not be able to see these things. It’s one more proof of his fundamental sin.

Prohibition passes to great celebration among the flock at Second Salem. Credence gets to feel _right_ for once, as if all the campaigning and preaching has brought something good into the world. It’s only one night, though, and then Ma is chasing her next goal. 

He turns twenty-one and does not leave. Credence isn’t blind: Chastity is afraid, on the morning of what they call his birthday, and Modesty is solemn even though she’s only six. They both know that he stands between them and Ma, whether Chastity acknowledges it or not. Ma is strangely satisfied, when he does not go, and Credence fears for his life. He is a witch in her house, and even if he’s sure he could overcome her now he doesn’t think he could raise a hand against her if he tried. 

Credence prays until his knees ache, reading Psalm 119 over and over until his eyes burn from exhausted tears and he can’t read the print anymore. “I have longed for thy salvation, O Lord; and thy law is my delight. Let my soul live, and it shall praise thee; and let thy judgments help me. I have gone astray like a lost sheep; seek thy servant; for I do not forget thy commandments. Amen…Blessed are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the law of the Lord. Blessed are they that keep his testimonies, and that seek him with the whole heart…”

It is 1926. 

Credence is twenty-three years old. It is the middle of October, an unusually warm one, soothing away fears of the frigid winter to come. He stands on a street corner with eight-year-old Modesty, holding the stack of leaflets that she hands out, piping childish voice doing a much better job of attracting passerby than Credence ever does. 

Modesty cheerfully thanks a tall man in a fedora for his time and skips back over to Credence, pigtails bouncing. “How many left?” she asks. They aren’t supposed to be so free, but the afternoon sun is warm and bright and Credence can’t make himself scold her. 

“Not too many,” he says, handing her several more. He’s already calculating how best to get her home early—perhaps he can stay longer at the corner today, send her home with some constructed message for Ma. Modesty deserves better than just having to stand here until it’s after dark. The walk to the church is dangerous at night and Credence hates the idea of something bad happening to Modesty.

It’s a little blasphemous, maybe, but Credence has always liked the story of Miriam and Moses. He does his best to protect little Modesty from the worst of things, just as Miriam protected her little brother Moses. If Ma knew that Credence compares himself to a woman in the Bible, she’d do worse than beat him. But she doesn’t know, and God willing she never will. 

“I want to go home,” Modesty says mutinously. 

Credence shakes his head. “We can’t, not yet,” he says. 

Modesty takes the leaflets with bad grace, going back to her street corner. Credence sighs and leans his hip against a lamp post. Clouds are moving in and it’s going to be cold soon. Warm winter or not, night is always colder. He really needs to get Modesty home.

Out of some sense of duty that’s more selfish than altruistic, Credence starts to speak to passerby again, trying to get them to take leaflets. They don’t, mostly. The streetlights flicker to life, still dull because there’s still light in the sky, but it’s still a signal that the night is closing in. If they’re too late, Ma will beat him—Credence only, because he’ll make sure it isn’t Modesty’s fault—which is a _wonderful_ way to end the day. 

It’s with these melancholy thoughts that Credence looks up and across the street. There is a man watching him, tall and handsome, dressed well, with eyes that pin Credence to the wall. The moment their eyes meet, the man advances across the street, heedless of the traffic. The cars, the passerby—they don’t seem to notice him. 

That’s when he thinks— _he’s a witch, he’s a witch and he sees me_ —and Credence is afraid. 

The man stops in front of Credence, people parting around him like the sea before the staff of Moses. He holds out one gloved hand. “Tell me,” he says, in a voice that’s so warm and _good_ that Credence’s knees tremble, “about witches.”

And Credence does, though he doesn’t really understand why, and hates himself for it later. He talks until his voice is hoarse, until he and Modesty are so late that Credence spends half the night bleeding. And when the man promises to meet him again the next day, Credence makes excuses until he’s allowed to go alone. He risks being beaten again, and again, and freezes his hands to the bone. Because he can’t let the man go. He can’t. 

In the eyes of Percival Graves, Credence Barebone finally exists.

**Author's Note:**

> "Act Zero": I read once that this is a better term than "backstory" because it's what happens before the play. I personally like it, so...here it is.
> 
> One relevant Bible verse is cited in-text and the other, from which the title is derived, is Hebrews 11:1: "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."


End file.
